Ron DeSantis continues to barnstorm New Hampshire, and continues to promise to shine a light on the nefarious activities of Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire who died in jail amid allegations of sex trafficking.
During an event in Windham on Friday, the 2024 presidential hopeful promised to "do full disclosure on things, you know, like the Jeffrey Epstein stuff."
"Why do we not know about all the stuff with Epstein? You know, neither Trump or Biden were willing to (or) are willing to do that. I think that's important," DeSantis said.
Interestingly, this isn't the first time even this month that Epstein issues have been discussed by DeSantis on the 2024 trail.
During another event held by the Never Back Down super PAC, the Governor told an Iowa crowd that he would release whatever details weren't released about Epstein.
"I don't know why they didn't make all that stuff public. You have a right to know what happened with all of that and we will declassify or put out whatever we can on that," DeSantis said in Le Mars.
As reported by the St. Thomas Source, Gordon Ackley, Chairman of the Virgin Islands Republican Party, grilled the Governor and 2024 presidential candidate about a lack of appointments for key positions as the financier, who died in prison under a cloud of sex trafficking charges in 2021, allegedly committed heinous acts.
"As President you get to appoint U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals and federal judges that oversee the territories. These appointments are very important to us because this is the only check and balance we have against our Democrat-controlled Legislature and we need these checks and balances in place," Ackley said.
"I feel that if we had those checks and balances in place, some of this negative publicity we've had through three Governorships here through the Epstein fiasco might have been headed off earlier," Ackley added.
DeSantis noted that "massive amounts of positions" were unfilled under former President Donald Trump, as he used the Epstein question as a launching pad for how aggressive he would be to fill openings and put his stamp on the federal government.
"Of course," DeSantis said. "I mean, it's malpractice not to fill all available positions as the President. When you don't do that then the bureaucrats run the show, and that means basically the Democrats are running the show."
DeSantis was never close to Epstein, but the financier's issues have intersected with the state and its officials to such a degree that the Governor, in his first term, ordered an investigation of Palm Beach County officials in the wake of Epstein's 2019 death in a jail cell to ensure that the criminal did not get "special treatment."
Notably, DeSantis this summer reappointed a lawyer who negotiated a "sweetheart" plea deal for the Palm Beach billionaire sex offender 15 years ago to one of several commissions responsible for nominating judges in Florida.
DeSantis again named Miami Beach lawyer Lilly Ann Sanchez, a shareholder at LS Law Firm, to the Judicial Nominating Commission of the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami-Dade County. He first appointed her to the group July 2, 2019.
Sanchez was part of a quartet of lawyers that included Ken Starr, author of the Starr Report that led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, who defended Epstein against charges of the statutory rape of numerous underage high school girls.
Epstein ultimately pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges of soliciting and trafficking underage girls, serving just 13 months on work release in a private wing of a Palm Beach jail.
Eleven years later, in March 2019, Sanchez and Starr co-wrote a letter to The New York Times defending Epstein's light sentence. They contended the "number of young women involved in the investigation has been vastly exaggerated" and that Epstein's time in prison and "enormous monetary settlements relying on his negotiated agreement" entitled him to "finality like every other defendant."
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Jesse Scheckner contributed reporting.
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